POPnews - August 30th

[After being arrested, Fanny Kaplan gave the following statement:*My name is Fanya Kaplan. Today I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details. I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution. I was exiled to Akatui for participating in an assassination attempt against a Tsarist official in Kiev. I spent 11 years at hard labour. After the Revolution, I was freed. I favoured the Constituent Assembly and am still for it.*She was executed four days later...]

1363 - The Battle of Lake Poyang began, pitting the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders - Chen Youliang of the Han and Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming - against each other in what would become one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. Hostilities would last until October 4th, and within five years of his victory Zhu would become the Hongwu Emperor, first of the Ming Dynasty to rule after the fall of the Yuan.

1574 - Guru Ram Das became the Fourth Sikh Guru.

1791 - The HMS Pandora - sent to Pitcairn Island under the command of Captain Edward Edwards to arrest those responsible for the Mutiny on the Bounty - sank after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef the previous day.

1800 - Gabriel Prosser attempted to incite a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, only to be thwarted by inclement weather; he was officially (if informally*) pardoned by Governor Tim Kaine on this day in 2007.

*Because the pardon being granted was posthumous it was also informal.

1813 - During the so-called Creek War a faction of Creek Red Sticks led by Peter McQueen and William Weatherford (known as Red Eagle) carried out the Fort Mims Massacre in Alabama.

1835 - Settlers from Tasmania founded Melbourne, Australia.

1836 - The Texas city of Houston was founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen.

1862 - After three days of fierce fighting Union forces under John Pope were defeated by the Confederates of Robert E. Lee at the Second Battle of Bull Run during the American Civil War.

1909 - The Burgess Shale fossils were discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott near Field, British Columbia.

1918 - Bolshevik leader V. I. Lenin was shot and seriously wounded by Fanny Kaplan, who was formerly a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

1922 - The Battle of Dumlupinar - the final engagement in the Greco-Turkish War (which was itself part of the larger Turkish War of Independence) - provided a decisive victory for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk over Greek commander Georgios Hatzianestis near the Turkish town of Kütahya following a four-day fight with heavy casualties on both sides.

1956 - The southbound lane of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opened.

1962 - Japan's Nihon Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation conducted a test of the NAMC YS-11, the country's only successfully manufactured aircraft following World War II; in total 182 of the turboprop airliners would be built before their production ceased in 1974, although the last one in domestic use wasn't grounded on September 2006.

1967 - Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.

1968 - Britain's Princess Marina was buried at Frogmore next to her husband following a funeral at St. George's Chapel, Windsor; she'd died of a brain tumour at her home in Kensington Palace on August 27th, only hours after the Nation first learned of her dire condition.

1976 - London's annual Notting Hill Carnival ended in a riot.

1982 - Following an invasion of Lebanon by the Israel Defense Forces - during an operation which has come to be known as the Siege of Beirut - Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat was forced to leave his headquarters in Beirut for the first time in a decade.

1984 - The Space Shuttle Discovery had its maiden launch; its most recent mission is ongoing as of this date, and two more are planned for it before the craft is retired along with the rest of the Space Shuttle fleet in 2010 to make way for NASA's next phase, Project Constellation.

1999 - East Timor voted in favour of independence from Indonesia.
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